The ecological development of shoaly land is one of the research topics on shoaly land in China. But till now, there is little research on scale in shoaly land research. In this paper, we first made a brief review of exploitation of shoaly land in China. Then we made a research on spatial scale issues of exploitation of shoaly land. It is thought there are great differences in researches on ecological development of shoaly land in different spatial scales. In the scale of plot, the core research is about agro-technology; in the scale of farm, micro-economy is the core research; and in the scale of region, the core research is about the ecological rationality of spatial combination of different development types of shoaly land. Then we outlined some problems on recent exploitation of shoaly land in China in different spatial scales. In the scale of region, the main problems are the lack of policy assistance and integrated management, regional environmental pollution and ecological destroy, regional freshwater absence, and frequent coastal disaster. In the scale of farm, the main problems are the lack of financing, weakness of shoaly land research, low benefit of resource development, waste of resources, and resource exhaustion. In the scale of plot, the main problems are unenlightened technology of resource development, and low land quality. At last, we analyzed the main characteristics of ecological development models on shoaly land in China in the scale of region, farm, and plot. We also analyzed the ecological process of each model and its socio-economic benefits of such ecological development models as stepped development of shoaly land, dike-pond system, multipurpose use of salt pans, and vertical culture in shrimp ponds.